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Tuesday, Dec 17 2019, 6AM
Robert Alfons, aka TR/ST on Destroyer 1 & 2: " When I started to create The Destroyer it wasn’t my plan to release it in 2 different parts. I created the record as my creative process and the stories that I wanted to tell. It was only towards the end, when I started to assemble a tracklist, that I started to realise how the songs had different vibes and aesthetics. I think it could have been quite overwhelming to put them all out there at once and because the stories are different. Then, I tried out this kind of setup and it just seemed way more effective"
When announcing the record back in September, DJ Shadow spoke of a wide-ranging concept reflecting a world plagued by “rampant homelessness” and “generational poverty.” Citing institutional failure, widespread feelings of anger and confusion, and an entertainment culture grounded in distraction, he offered his double album—the first half all instrumental, the second dedicated to rap collaborations—as an attempt to find “light in darkness” and bring it to a generation seemingly glued to their devices.
In her RBMA lecture, Gavin Rayna Russom stressed the importance of creating her own methods for making music. Watch the full lecture: youtu.be
“Policy Of Truth” became one of three US hit singles from the album Violator for Depeche Mode, which at that time included Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, Andrew Fletcher and Alan Wilder. That worldwide success was part of the goal, as lead singer Gahan told Under The Radar magazine in a 2009 interview. “What really drove me was, first of all, to prove to you and everybody else that we were a force to be reckoned with,” Gahan says of that era. “That we were important and had just as much right to be here as your U2s or whoever were the critics darlings at the time. I think we always felt we were somehow slighted in that way. When we were making Violator, even though we had no idea what the success of that album was going to be after we released it, there was definitely a feeling of breaking new ground.”
William Emmanuel Bevan, known by his recording alias Burial, is a British electronic musician from South London. Bevan grew up a fan of jungle and garage, having been introduced to the UK rave scene by his older brothers. In an interview with The Wire, he explained:
"I was brought up on old jungle tunes and garage tunes that had lots of vocals in but me and my brothers loved intense, darker tunes too, I found something I could believe in... but sometimes I used to listen to the ones with vocals on my own and it was almost a secret thing [...] My brother might bring back these records that seemed really adult to me and I couldn’t believe I had ‘em. It was like when you first saw Terminator or Alien when you're only little. I'd get a rush from it, I was hearing this other world..."
"A Caged Bird/Imitations of Life" featuring Roots Manuva, was released as a limited 12-inch single in independent record stores in January 2019.
Scott-Heron's baritone vocals on the album stylistically range from spoken word to blues-oriented crooning. Music-writers have described his voice on the album as "bourbon-soaked".
Kate Tempest performed "Perfect Coffee" live in the KEXP studio on March 28, 2017. bit.ly
Belau explain...
"'Natural Pool' is the symbol of a place or goal, which you would like to really achieve, but there’re just few people, who can reach it. If you can make it, you’ll experience new dimensions of freedom and bliss, which could be life changing..." Their new album, Colourwave is set to drop in March 2020 and they're also planning a global tour.
Alberto Balsalm – named after the shampoo, the song also includes the sound of Aphex cutting his hair
Youth, songwriter & producer: "A fan who worked in a record shop in Birmingham sent me a tape with a note saying it would be perfect for the Orb. On one side, Pat Metheny was playing Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint. On the other was an interview with Rickie Lee Jones. Someone asked her: “So what were the skies like when you were young?” and she launched into a trippy monologue about stars and clouds. I sampled it and put it over a basic pulse. That was the start of Little Fluffy Clouds."
Caspian will be at Neumos on February 9th. Guitarist/keyboardist Philip Jamieson says, “I’ve grown weary of reading about bands discuss the renewing, rehabilitative properties their most recent [album] has had on them. They incur corrosion, come close to running out of gas, descend into the dark abyss, and finally emerge on the other side with a record that has given them crystal clear perspective and a confident path forward. On Circles is not that record.”
Wolf Parade's fifth full-length Thin Mind is out January 24th via Sub Pop. They're coming to The Showbox on February 11th. Tickets & info: bit.ly
Arcade Fire recorded a new version of this song for the soundtrack of the 2009 children's movie Where The Wild Things Are. The film's director Spike Jonze told Digital Spy: "I met Arcade Fire on their first record, Funeral. I loved that record and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote Where the Wild Things Are. Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighborhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood."
Deserta began to take shape in 2017. Shortly after finding out he was going to be a father, Matthew Doty started working on a batch of songs inspired by the joy and the unknown of the world he was about to enter. That inspiration is the sonic and emotional backbone of debut album Black Aura My Sun.
Smith deliberately sought to record an album that was depressing, as it was a reflection of the despondency he felt at the time. The sound of the album was a shock to the band's American label Elektra Records; the label requested Smith shift the release date back several months. Smith recalled "they thought I was being 'willfully obscure', which was an actual quote from the letter [Smith received from Elektra]. Ever since then I realised that record companies don't have a fucking clue what The Cure does and what The Cure means."
Speaking to Mojo about "Rise" in 2016, John Lydon said:
"I think it's one of my best pop songs. The content of what it was about got me into hot water. It was that time when everyone was talking about how great Nelson Mandela was; but my history lessons went back further... people died.
My message is there's no political cause worthy enough that people should die for it. Once you start murdering your fellow human beings it's over. 'Rise' is about the stop of that. I related it to my own background. I've got Protestant and Catholic relatives in the north of Ireland, why were they killing each other."
Hazel English released a video for "Shaking" on the 11th. Check it out: t.co
“I wanted to find some power in powerlessness,” frontwoman Dana Margolin explains. “I was thinking about love and control and the things out of my control, and how fragile and incapable depression can make you feel. I was thinking about the way you can feel so close to someone that it’s like their body is your body, like there’s no separation between you, but you can’t stop things disintegrating. It’s a song about finding some hope and some future within that.”
The album takes its name from the 1971 experimental film Tomato Kecchappu Kōtei by Japanese author and director Shūji Terayama
Shopping for the holidays is stressful enough to send anyone reaching for the eggnog, but for Darryl McDaniels, a k a DMC of Run-DMC, it’s especially taxing.
“At this time of year, I can’t walk five steps at the mall without someone shouting the lyrics to ‘Christmas in Hollis’ at me,” he tells The Post. “Just yesterday, I was at the grocery store, and a lady said, ‘Guess what’s on my playlist right now?’ I said, ‘Christmas in Hollis.’ She said, ‘How did you know?!’ It’s a beautiful thing, but I got to expect that for the rest of my life!”
“Feel It (You Got It)” marks the Roots’ first new song since the Detroit soundtrack’s “It Ain’t Fair” in 2017. Questlove, Black Thought and company are reportedly at work on the Roots’ first album since 2014’s …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin; in 2016, the group announced their 12th studio album would be titled End Game. It’s unclear if “Feel It (You Got It)” is destined for that in-the-works LP.
"Michael Kiwanuka: ‘I’m living my dream. And I was wasting it with thoughts of inferiority" Read the Guardian interview with Michael Kiwanuka here: bit.ly
This song deals with civil unrest in Europe and America in 1968. There were student riots in London and Paris, and protests in America over the Vietnam War. The specific event that led Mick Jagger to write the lyric was a demonstration at Grosvenor Square in London on March 17, 1968. Jagger (along with Vanessa Redgrave), joined an estimated 25,000 protesters in condemning the Vietnam War.
The demonstrators marched to the American embassy, where the protest turned violent. Mounted police charged the crowd, which responded by throwing rocks and smoke bombs. About 200 people were taken to the hospital and another 246 arrested. Jagger didn't make it to the embassy: before the protest turned violent, he abandoned it, returning to his home in nearby Cheyne Walk. Jagger realized that his celebrity was a hindrance to the protest, as his presence distracted from the cause.
"Saw Lightning" was co-written by Beck and Pharrell Williams. Beck said: "I was making a record called Midnite Vultures and while we were making it… I remember the Neptunes [Pharrell's production duo] had just come out, and I said I'm gonna do the next record with the Neptunes, and here we are 20 years later".
Want more? "Oar House", the second single off of the upcoming album You Can Never Have a Long Enough Head Start, is on Floral Tattoo's Bandcamp: floraltattoo.bandcamp.com
We were working on a new calendar that eliminated all Tuesdays but then when would we play this?
The song uses a recurring Australian problem, drought, to pose the question "What for?", meaning "Why did Europeans bother to colonise this harsh place?" The song mentions two prominent indigenous Australians, Truganini and Albert Namatjira, whose lives were altered by European settlement and discusses current day sentiment towards the old country.
Lo-fi indie folk rocker John Darnielle, aka The Mountain Goats performed an incredible live set of songs from their much beloved catalog live from West Seattle during KEXP’s Hood-to-Hood Day 2015, including this song. Listen to the set here: bit.ly
When guitarist James Werle tragically passed away from cancer in September 2018, his bandmates in Math & Physics Club retreated from the music world to grieve. But thankfully, music has brought them back together for one final release as a band. Though Werle didn't technically perform on "Indian Ocean (The End of Everything)," his presence is undeniable.
Watch Alexi Murdoch performing "Orange Sky" at Easy Street Records bit.ly
This song was addressed during a screening of the Simon & Garfunkel documentary Songs of America. At the screening, Garfunkel said, "I had Paul sort of waiting: 'All right, I can take this for three months. I'll write the songs, but what's the fourth month? And why is Artie in Rome a fifth month? What's Mike [Nichols] doing to Simon & Garfunkel?' And so there's Paul in the third month, still with a lot of heart, writing about, 'I'm the only living boy in [New York]. You used to be the other one."
“Baby, empires fall all of the time,” Guy Garvey intones, offering up another one of those quintessential Elbow lines that manages to sound like some bit of poetry Garvey’s uttering over a glass of whiskey, late at night. Actually, considering “Empires” is about the “banality of death,” there’s a couple lyrics in that vein here, like “How can a bland, unremarkable, typical Tuesday be Day Of The Dead?”
Bono told BBC Radio 2's Chris Evans that he tried to copy the gravel-voiced white soul singer Joe Cocker when recording his vocals for this song.
The December 11th KEXP Song of the Day, as chosen by John, was "On Your Side" by The Innocence Mission, from the 2020 album See You Tomorrow on Bella Union. Find it and subscribe to the podcast here: bit.ly
Kurt Cobain listed She Hangs Brightly in his top fifty albums of all time.
Frances Quinlan is playing the Columbia City Theater with Mary Lattimore on March 5th. Tickets & info: bit.ly
“One Little Soldier” is taken from the soundtrack to Bombshell, which chronicles the takedown of Roger Ailes. The movie is in theaters on the 20th.
The opening verse is sung by a friend's eight-year-old daughter, Jasmine Veillette, but was later lip-synched in the video by a young boy.
The duo released this track as a free download on Christmas Eve 2007, whilst still unsigned
The drums in this song were cut up from different parts of other songs from the sessions for the album.
Peter Buck of R.E.M. plays the guitar solo at the beginning.
Ned's Atomic Dustbin have just released a new 14 song LP recorded in 4 days. It is called Ned's Acoustic Dustbin and is available here: bit.ly
"Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You)" by Bombay Bicycle Club was KEXPs Song of the Day in October. Find it here: bit.ly
50,000 deep refers to all the protesters who were on the streets of Seattle on November 30th, 1999.: genius.com